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Classic Coronation Street
From Monday 1st October 1996 to 1st November 2004 the satellite channel Granada Plus (later G Plus and Plus) carried a sequential run of repeats of Coronation Street episodes that were originally transmitted from Episode 1588 (5th April 1976) onwards. Before the station began broadcasting, the repeats of the programme were considered a main selling point; indeed early magazine advertisements stated that the entire run of the programme would be shown from 1960. This ambitious plan was scaled back to start with April 1976, thus capitalising with the return of Elsie Tanner after a two-and-a-half year break and also the start of the period produced by Bill Podmore which was considered by some critics to be a "golden age" for the show (it also avoided transmitting episodes made in black and white as a popular bias by some of the viewing public avoids television material made in that medium). The early months of the station had episodes being shown four times a day and an omnibus at early peak times on Sundays. In addition, the station carried special repeats of particular episodes from the entire range of the programme's history, mostly on Saturdays but with an emphasis on such repeats at Christmas. Indeed Christmas Day 1996 saw the schedules pre-empted from 10.00am to 6.00pm with a continuous run of the first sixteen episodes from December 1960 to February 1961. Although the repeats were initially popular enough to justify their high profile on the station, as the years passed and the sequential run entered into a period that was more within the recent memory of viewers, public interest waned. Special repeats almost disappeared from the schedules as the station soon ran out of material considered "special", e.g. the programme's Christmas episodes. which were shown numerous times with Episode 1246 (25th December 1972) having at least six transmissions over the years. By 1999 the transmission times for regular episodes had dropped to three showings a day with the loss of the prime-time 9.00pm slot. Later in the year the omnibus was pulled back to mid-afternoon and in 2002 was transferred entirely to a Saturday morning transmission. In the final few months of the station's life, the importance of the programme within the schedules was dramatically downscaled with no timeslot at or near peak-viewing time and one of the three transmissions taking place in a "graveyard" slot of 1.30am. The station abruptly ceased transmissions at 4.30pm on Monday 1st November 2004 with no notice given to viewers and little to its employees. The reason for the closure was ITV's wish to use its satellite channel for its new ITV3 station. Episode 3657 (9th February 1994) was the last edition of the programme to be repeated on the channel. External link Wikipedia page on Granada Plus ''Coronation Street'' transmission history on Granada Plus Below are links to pages with details of all regular repeat episodes carried on the channel from its inception. *Repeats in 1996 *Repeats in 1997 *Repeats in 1998 *Repeats in 1999 *Repeats in 2000 *Repeats in 2001 *Repeats in 2002 *Repeats in 2003 *Repeats in 2004 Category:Granada Plus repeats